A proposal to tighten the rules on student protests at East Penn School District drew rejection from the school board and a thank you from one of the district’s teenage activists.
Collective denouncement of the proposal, which called on administrators to manage students’ political demonstrations, helped unite the burgeoning group of activists, Emmaus High School junior Samantha Smith said.
“By proposing this, you’ve unintentionally helped us,” she said. “We stand stronger than ever.”
About 10 of Smith’s classmates stood behind her as she spoke at a Monday school board meeting, as a silent display of support for her message.
The proposal was put forth by school board Director Carol Allen, who said she wished recent student protests had taken place outside of school, in part because she believed that would make them safer. She said the proposal she introduced Monday is under consideration by another Pennsylvania school district.
Allen’s colleagues largely disagreed, describing the proposed policy as unnecessary and poorly written. The board voted 5-1 against discussing the it. Chris Donatelli abstained and Charles Ballard was absent. Allen was the only vote in favor.
Allen’s proposal spelled out how she wanted the district to manage student protests, walkouts, demonstrations, sit-ins and “social movement events,” described as events with “the potential of being politically charged and [that] may show the district in an unfavorable light such as creating an atmosphere of riots, crowds, and mass hysteria.”
East Penn has policies about student and teacher speech, but not about student political demonstrations, Superintendent Michael Schilder said. He said he has no interest in writing or adopting one.
“We don’t need it,” he said. “Students have handled themselves responsibly.”
Schools can limit student speech at school only if it creates serious disruptions to learning, said Molly Tack-Hooper, an attorney for the ACLU of Pennsylvania. Such disruptions rarely occur, she said, and disruptive reaction to the speech doesn’t count.
“When the speech itself is peaceful and nondisruptive, you don’t want to give other people what we call a ‘heckler’s veto,'” she said. “You shouldn’t let other people shut down [free speech] by being rowdy.”
In her proposal, Allen called on district officials to offer students alternative ways to express themselves, such as letter writing and fundraising, in order to minimize disruption. Staff shouldn’t express their personal political views with students during the school day, she wrote.
While it’s appropriate for districts to have policies about demonstrations, Allen’s proposed policy’s silence on what constitutes political speech is “really problematic,” Tack-Hooper said. It leaves too much to interpretation, she said.
“The risk is that officials will inevitably allow speech they agree with and crack down on speech they view as controversial, maybe because they don’t agree with it,” she said. “That’s the main reason vague policies regulating speech are a First Amendment no-no.”
Allen contended teachers’ taking time to supervise demonstrations constitutes political speech. “Taxpayers pay for teachers to teach during school hours,” she said.
The proposal’s definition of a protest — as “a declaration of opinion, act of objecting, gesture of disapproval, or display of unwillingness to an idea or course of action or lack of action”— struck school board member Ziad Munson as problematic, too.
“The protest is defined here as the declaration of an opinion,” he said. “Which makes saying that you prefer Pepsi over Coke a protest in our district.”
Allen’s proposal followed a set of student protests sparked after a February shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla. In March, hundreds of Emmaus students participated in a nationwide walkout in protest of gun violence. On Friday, more than 100 wrote letters to politicians, heard from speakers and registered to vote during a “day of action.”
Allen, who watched the march and attended some of the day of action, lauded students’ behavior and said both events turned out well. She said the day of action, with its emphasis on discussion and political engagement, was especially educational.
“Any reasonable taxpayer would be very happy to see that students are interested in their country and trying to make things better,” she said.
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